


Everything You Are

by SoongTypeDisaster



Category: Summer King Chronicles - Jess E. Owen
Genre: Flash Fic, Gen, Prophetic Dreams, Vignette
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-23
Updated: 2017-02-23
Packaged: 2021-02-25 22:34:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,212
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21693118
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SoongTypeDisaster/pseuds/SoongTypeDisaster
Summary: Halvden begins to have dreams that could change the course of his life.
Relationships: Halvden/Kenna
Kudos: 1





	Everything You Are

**Author's Note:**

> Just a short one, but after finishing my second read of Jess Owen's Summer King Chronicles, I got the itch to explore what may have prompted the dramatic changes we see in Halvden as the books continue.
> 
> Possible spoilers for A Shard of Sun and By The Silver Wind, so I don't recommend reading unless you've finished the series, just in case.

Halvden shifted restlessly in the den, anger seeping into his dreams of late. The Widow Queen had wasted no time in taking her islands back, and though he had sworn to bow to Thyra, he seethed at the thought that she went along with the Vanir queen's wishes so easily. To add insult to injury, though Kenna had taken him back, had permitted him in their shared den, she had forbidden him from sleeping in the same nest, instead forcing him to the far corner.  
  
Kenna's anger baffled and unsettled him. His actions had been a means to an end. Could she not see that? Glory, honor, and power for him meant that it would pass to their kit as well.  
  
But all that was shattered now, and in his dreams shrieking, witless things clawed at him while voices in the dark echoed accusations that it was all his doing. The mocked him, infuriated him. So it had gone since he'd returned to answer for his crimes. The dream-beasts closed in and, as always, he expected the dream to end with Caj defeating him, shaming him. Talons clenched stone even in the waking world as he readied himself.  
  
This time, though, Caj did not come. As a gryfon advanced from the shadows, Halvden expected cobalt feathers and fierce yellow eyes. Instead he saw a flash of gray, and realized it was Rashard, but not as Halvden remembered him. The gray gryfon stepped forward with a regal air, green eyes piercing and confident, so unlike the Shard he'd bullied mere months ago. Halvden lifted his wings, prepared to ramp up and attack, but the dream-Shard only stared at him, seeming to judge him. But then a softness came to his eyes. Remorse? Pity? For what?  
  
"Speak, then," Halvden spat, growing impatient for the dream to end. "Gloat! Anything! Don't just stand there gawking at me, you mudding--"  
  
"Bright with dragon's blood..." Rashard's voice sounded distant, awed. Infuriating even in dreams.  
  
Halvden felt his feathers ruffle, tail switching back and forth to dust the empty blackness that served as his ground in this nightmare. But even as Halvden opened his beak to retort, the dream-Shard was backing away, melting back into darkness.  
  
And then he was alone.  
  
The silence that followed was somehow more unnerving than the witless screams had been. Everything was dark and cold. Halvden's heart began to beat faster, fear threatening to choke him even as he tried to douse it in anger and pride. Just when he thought he might go witless and mad from the tension, a tiny light twinkled at the edge of his vision - a star? And he felt himself waking.  
  
 _"Everything you are will be more so."_  
  
The voice, almost like a gryfon's but with a different, strange lilt to it, seemed to whisper in his ear, realer than the dream from which he was waking. Halvden snapped his head up and looked around the den, hissing in surprise.  
  
"Who's there?" Wild-eyed, every feather seeming to stand on end from the lingering tension of the strange nightmare, Halvden sought the source of the voice. But there was only Kenna, still sound asleep in the nest. And the voice had most definitely not been hers. He closed his eyes and saw a flash, an echo of luminous eyes, impossibly large. With a deep breath, trying to regain a sense of dignity, the green gryfon resettled his wings and tried to go back to sleep. The voice had only been part of the dream, he told himself. Nothing more.  
  


* * *

Time passed, and Halvden worked to regain a place in the pride. It seemed Sverin would indeed remain a prisoner, and so the emerald warrior would have to start anew. He told himself he did it for his unborn kit, for Kenna's approval. Yet the longer he pushed himself into honest work, the more real it felt to him - realer than his lies and posturing ever had. Free, now, from the pressures of what his father would have wanted, Halvden at last became his own gryfon.

In all that time he'd thought no more of the strange voice in the night. His nightmares had long since faded as he cast aside old falsehoods. Soon enough he found himself entrusted even with guard duty at Sverin's den. This, too, he accepted with a great deal more dignity and humility than the old Halvden would have done. But he had, after all, sworn a wingbrother vow, and would see to it that Sverin remained in his right mind. The vow, at least, he had meant, though once he had twisted it for his own ends.

He wondered, sometimes, if Ragna had some other purpose in allowing him to guard the fallen king. For as he watched the changes in him, Halvden often grew thoughtful, wondering if this strange, humbled Sverin was somehow better. Certainly he seemed less mad, more in control of himself. To know that fear was what had driven him all that time... Fear, not strength, as Halvden had once thought. It drove him to look inward.

_Like a Vanir_ , he thought bitterly, still clinging to old prejudice like a kit to its mother. He resettled his wings and stared out at the sky. At least the weather was dreary enough that he didn't much mind standing vigil where it was dry. Sverin rarely needed much watching, subdued as he was these days, so eventually Halvden found himself half-dozing on his feet. It was then that he heard it.

_"Everything you are will be more so."_

It was the same voice as before, wind-like and lilting. Halvden held his breath, muscles going rigid as he gave a half-glace to orange Vald beside him. But Vald gave no indication he'd heard anything. For half a breath Halvden wondered if he had better see the healer, but then his ears ticked back, realizing that at the same moment he'd heard the voice again, the noise of clattering metal came from the large nest at his back. Something had startled Sverin awake.

"Who's there?" came a hiss from the dark recesses of the den. It was the same thing Halvden had asked when he'd heard it the first time. More scraping came from the nest, the sound of Sverin shifting to look around. "What does it mean?"

Sverin's voice was barely above a whisper and Halvden, beak slipping open, was sure now that the Red King had heard the same voice.

He tried to quell the pounding in his chest, lest Vald hear it and think he was afraid. But Vald seemed to assume the muttering was little more than further madness on Sverin's part, and merely shifted to block more of the den's entrance.

_Everything you are will be more so._ It had sounded, he decided, like a female voice. But whose? Was this some Vanir witchery? Or, perhaps, was it a sign? A sign he was to become something better?

Well, if it was indeed a sign, then he would _choose_ what to be. He would be the best. The best warrior, the best leader, the best mate, the best father... so that when Kjorn returned, he would have his honor and glory. And this time, he would _earn_ it.


End file.
